Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 36


 * The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA. The result of the discussion was Symbol delete vote.svg Denied

Yobot 36
Operator:

Time filed: 00:21, Thursday, February 2, 2017 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): AWB / WPCleaner

Source code available:

Function overview: Add prefix URL without http://

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): Daily

Estimated number of pages affected: 30 pages per day

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: www.foo.com will change to http://www.foo.com

This task was done by SmackBot in the past and nowadays by BG19bot and Menobot.

Discussion

 * Can you provide an example diff? ~ Rob 13 Talk 00:30, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Add it to what? (e.g. what pages?) `— xaosflux  Talk 00:33, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Page are daily detected by this page. And there is a monthly report found at CHECKWIKI/062 dump. This is CHECKWIKI error #62. I will add the standard http prefix. the are other bots that maybe later change this prefix to https. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:17, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Example diff. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:18, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

The task description does not mention any general fixes being run, and provided they are not enabled this appears to be a fine task for a bot to perform. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 12:15, 2 February 2017 (UTC)


 * How will you know what protocol identifier to use? — xaosflux  Talk 02:02, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The community has been showing support that when possible https should be used over http for external links. So if you come across say www.nytimes.com will you be inserting an http on it when https would be preferred? —  xaosflux  Talk 12:19, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it would work to simply insert http: and let the other bots that specialize in http to https transition handle it from there. For example the Bender bot has slowly been increasing the collection of sites that it switches to https. Keeping them in sync seems like a challenging coordination problem, but it is possible for the two tasks to go separately, as long as the http: links work correctly until they are converted to https: later. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 12:25, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * But why not just have the other bot take over adding http: and do both tasks at once? I'm generally against having a bot create work for another bot, since that causes an extra edit in the article history of potentially many articles. If we really need two bots, then we could possibly solve the coordination problem by having the operator of the http: to https: conversion bot hosting a list of all domains supporting https: in their userspace, with the bot applying http:/https: from scratch querying the page before each run and adding https: instead of http: in front of any domains listed on that userpage. (That wouldn't work for a purely AWB bot - would need another coding language.) ~ Rob 13 Talk 13:12, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

There seems to be sufficient concerns raised about the task being proposed here to indicate a lack of consensus, in particular concern over which protocol to use. I also note that whether other bots do the task is immaterial. Furthermore, I find flooding WP:BRFA with 20 requests all at once is probably bordering on WP:POINT: I suggest you limit yourself to fewer than 5 open requests at a time so you can more easily express yourself clearly and so you and the community can have time for necessary discussion. In light of that, I'm not inclined to leave this request open while you try to figure it out; feel free to come back once your backlog of open requests is cleaned up and you've established consensus elsewhere on the protocol question. Anomie⚔ 02:16, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA.